peakoil

I've seen a number of these premium listings and I don't really understand it. If you are in the market for a house between £XX and £YY with 4 beds etc. etc. - then you'll look at all of them that match EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO ####GOD FORBID#### SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE! What a waste of time and money. I've spoken to two people this week who have loads of equity in their houses buy say they can't sell them. I said the same to each of them: You would sell your house in 15 minutes if it was priced at £10k so somewhere BETWEEN £10k and YOUR PRICE is the MARKET PRICE at which it would sell in a week or two. Sure your buyers might have problems with their chains etc., but you would have offers and interest AT THE MARKET PRICE. Here's the way I see it.... Most people on this forum seem pretty intelligent by turn of phrase and analysis (even the tin foil hatters from time to time) so what you have to do is think of the most stupid person you can think of... then realise that half the population are dumber than them.

That would be a top idea if the euro experiment were not doomed to failure. Was / is interesting to watch but ultimately doomed.

same thing (ish) happened to me. The house I rented was owned by a derivatives trader who "promised" (not it writing) that I could rent it for at least 5 years. I signed a 1 years contract because I figured I'd find a house I liked in that time. Couldn't believe the market ROSE during that period, then had to tell the wife that SHE would be showing prospective buyers around. Hmmm. didn't go down well. Two kids (one born whilst in the rental). Anyway, turns out the new place we've rented is gorgeous, the older child LOVES it far more - no regrets and we don't miss the old place at all. it was a nightmare to move (it always is) and it was NOT part of my game plan (even less my wifes) but it's worked out well, and I hope the same is true for you. This time however I can only get a three month rolling - so I do have that constant fear of being kicked down the road. The very thing we all talk about on here is how daft BTL landlords are for holding on to their properties.... but I bet very few of us want to constantly move... good luck with it all.

.co is columbia I think - a bit like .uk is er... the UK. years ago some enterprising youth purchased UK.CO in columbia then re-sold hosts off the back of it - ie. made up his OWN TLD (if you call .co.uk a tld which it isn't) He sold a LOT of them, one to someone I know. After a while - the columbians realised what he was doing (i.e. he had made a sh'ite load more money than they had) and took the domain back from him. The columbians have now opened up the registry to the world to raise some bucks (without grinding it into 1kg cellophane packs and sending it by submarine to florida). The italians did it some years ago with .it (i.e. golf.it, or f'ck.it or whatever). They sold 10s of thousands. How many vans have you seen with plumb.it or fix.it on the back? My guess is approximately (give or take) none. Anyway, the moral of this story is oh, actually I don't think there is a moral, it just happens that I agree ".co" is sh'ite. Doesn't mean people won't make money from them though! They still sell houses in slough.

Think average is about 700 quid per month for unlimited properties

I find that nearly all TV sucks. I had this misfortune this evening to watch a show called "odd one in" at my in-laws place. Truly, shockingly, mind numbingly puerile. Guess who's telling the truth. If you want to guess who's telling the truth why not watch newsnight, question time, cnbc or the parliament channel? At least your knowledge of current events might increase? I suppose the problem is that in the "odd one in" show - at least ONE of them is telling the truth... sorry for the rant.

i wanted to offer on a house (in fact I think ALL OFFERS by LAW must be put to the vendor) - but the estate agent WOULD NOT call the vendor! He said my offer would just "make him angry". This was a house that went on the market in ..... 2006! He lives in dubai (in a bubble I guess) and this house has languished on the market since October 2006. He dropped it by 10% in 2007 (BEFORE the first little crash) after an estate agent that I know told him he should be marketing it for 35% less than he was to get a buyer. We offered 10% under what the estate agent told him his price should be in 2007! My "offer" never got to him because apparently he's scary when he's angry (perhaps its Lou Ferrigno) and the estate agent didn't want to upset him. Anyway, all this was because I was under pressure from Mrs Oil a couple of months back ... but after showing her the news articles over the last week - even she's coming round to believing the property market "might be in a bubble"... I wouldn't be suprised to see the entire market around here crash and this guy STILL not drop his price. 4 years on the market! edit: typo

my fathers road was very badly potholed after the winter. He went out, bought tar and...er... whatever else it is that goes in potholes, and repaired them himself (note that he's a retired electrical engineer - not a road surface expert). The potholes at the other end of the road have just been repaired last week (by the council)- it will be interesting to see which repairs last longest! People live all along the street but they "weren't their problem". If everyone does their bit socially then there is far less need for council money... for instance, when there is a crime, if everyone can take up their pitch fork and burning torch....

Let's not forget that if people start pulling their money from property they have to find a home for it, and with negative returns from savings accounts it leaves little choice but defensives and they make up a chunk of the ftse 100. Just a thought. . .

genius idea, get the young criminals into indentity theft instead of assault

actually permies are cheaper than contractors or temps - often MUCH cheaper. The reason companies use contractors or temps is because staff costs go down on the books as a permanent cost which would be deducted from profitability, contractors can be assigned to a "temporary project" (that never ends) - that DOES NOT come off the bottom line. Basically replacing permies with contractors is a quick SHORT TERM way of increasing the profitability of your company on paper. Perfect for increasing your company valuation for buyout for instance. There are some tax reasons too, but I'm not aware of how that benefit works.

many years ago my now business partner worked as a labourer on a building site. The biggest house at one end was earmarked for the guy who was developing the land and running the project. The interesting part is that when they got to start that - he changed the cement mix ratio to include more cement and less sand. I can't remember the figures but it was something like 1 cement to 4 sand for all the others and 1 cement to 3 sand for his house. Proving your point exactly. Clearly he thought that mixture was important for his house... but b#gger everyone else!

i love the way BP are used as a scapegoat to explain the FTSE 100 drop - so why has the FTSE allshare had the same week: http://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=INDEXFTSE:.FTAS

very interesting these comments about negligence, I was suprised that the solictor was being so helpful without charging an additional (and large) fee. Perhaps there is at the least some worry of culpability. The house is a 1930s detatched (3 or 4 beds not sure which) needs new kitchen, bathrooms, etc. etc. Good location in the town, just an average family home I guess.

A friend of mine down in Kent found a place he wants in December 2009. He's in rented at the moment and has been forced into it by his missus (anyone on here who's married and in rented knows the pressure...) - anyway, he got a mortgage offer in December 2009. Last week he finally got the chain complete and was ready to exchange so he telephoned leeds BS to check his mortgage offer - as it was only guaranteed for 3 months, then he had it extended for three months (this meant that on paper the deal had expired by a few weeks). They said "everything is fine - go ahead and exchange". He did - with a 10% deposit. When the solicitors contacted the leeds for the mortgage money however - they said they would not cover the original amount and said they would offer 42000 less in borrowings. This left my friend completely stuffed - 10% down and no chance of raising the money. His solictor threatened legal action against leeds but conveniently the call was not "recorded for training purposes" Eventually they have agreed to lend him 16000 less than they originally agreed - but only on the threat of legal action. I don't know what the exact figures are because I'm too polite to ask - but it won't be any more borrowing than about 200k or 250k at the outside. Thought it very interesting that leeds have clearly decided the property is worth less than in December 2009 (he has had a substantial pay rise since then too - so it can't be based on affordability). Mr Oil.

sorry to pick on you (the irish), you were just the straw that broke the camels back - but has anyone else noticed that hardly anybody on this forum can spell lose? you lose a job, and if you look down your shoelaces might be loose. I see it every day and for some reason it drives me barmy. Perhaps I have OCD. no, that's not right they should be in alphabetical order or it looks wrong CDO AAGHH.

i've not read this full thread so this might have been covered, but this is a good resource for looking up who is covered: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/safe-savings#whatcounts

flouride toothpaste...?

I stand corrected, sorry, I did not mean to mis-inform.

was it a "normal" sale or a repo or auction sale? In their infinite wisdom the Land Registry do not use or publish the figures from known repos or auctions because they are not "indicative of the true market value" - quite how an auction isn't EXACTLY indicative of the true market value I'm not sure....

thanks, I'd not seen that before. Appreciated.

Good stats, always interesting to see this type of data. have you got a link for the tool you use to dig that data out? I think there's a land registry tool for it - but you seem to be using something, so I thought I'd ask instead...

all our local EAs are struggling because they all know property is overvalued and they have no velocity in the market place - but as soon as they are sent out to value places they all KNOW they have to be the highest to get the business. The owners want confirmation that their property is worth a small (or large) fortune, and the person who "gives them" the biggest fortune gets the house on their books. Then, it doesn't sell, but every penny less than that initial assessment is a penny "lost" by the seller, hence they can't "afford" to go any lower or they are not willing to "take a loss of £XX,XXX". I've seen land registry figures showing people are making over 500k in profit on their house if they sell and yet they still say "I can't take a loss of XX,XXX" from the asking price. I have a friend who is an estate agent and he STILL has to overvalue or he knows he won't get them on his books. He does (however) remember a time in the 90's when estate agents would not take on a property unless the owner was willing to be realistic about the price - as it cost the estate agents money to market it for zero return if it was never going to sell. Perhaps those days will one day return. I think a lot of this is to do with the highly vested media, because if people have just read the daily mail telling them their house is going UP UP and AWAY then they don't want to hear a dose of realism from an estate agent. Sticks in vase in corner adds £10k. Motorway noise, that adds £50k. Rising damp, that adds £50k. Infestation of mice, surely another 25K? They are a very rare breed of mouse, seldom seen in the UK.

has anyone got a link to the speech? sky news had it live but I only got the last five mins....

We just moved from a 400 year old coach house to a modern house (both rented!) and the coach house had 10 ft ceilings and single glazing. I spent 4500 on oil in 18 months and never got the place over 20 degrees in winter. Horrible horrible horrible. I thought I might like a period property until I rented that place. Mind you they've sold it from under me for 1.1M to some poor bloke who asked me as I was moving out "is it a warm house?" - er.... "no, it's bl##dy freezing" I replied... he'll learn. Modern all the way for me from now... oh, and that place near me would cost you 750-850k it's a frikkin' joke.